


Crashing At The Bow

by FyrMaiden



Category: Glee
Genre: Depression, Diminished Sex Drive, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 02:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3272672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FyrMaiden/pseuds/FyrMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the casualties of depression is Blaine's sex drive. Recovering it is a journey. (Karofsky-positive. Suicide attempt mentioned is his.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Crashing At The Bow

**Author's Note:**

> Much gratitude for Misqueue for the hand-holding, encouragement, and for legitimately making this a better story than it otherwise would have been.

It’s not that Blaine is unaware, in the weeks and days and hours, in the endless blank dark that foreshadow him being cut and him leaving New York, that something is wrong. As he fights and wins and stays (and then fights and loses and leaves, and finds himself back in Ohio, back in Lima, back in his parents’ house and his old bedroom, with his mom’s cooking and his life in pieces), he’s not unaware of the disinterest he has in his own body, or of the disinterest his body has in him. His body is a cage for misery on his bad days, apathy on his good ones, and everything else seems long ago and far away. Lightness, levity, and laughter are all remote and hazy. Haunting the landings and hallways and cavernous echoing spaces of his childhood home, the boy who’d loved Kurt Hummel - _who loves_ , he knows; irrespective of his angry assertion, he knows he can’t hate Kurt indefinitely, knows his bruised heart doesn’t want to carry this hatred forever - seems a thousand years ago, a millennium of time and space between the two of them, the distance growing in bounds. There’s a Kessel run between them now. The one who is now in Ohio is grieving and lost and - 

And he’s ultimately not unaware that he’s 19 years old and that sex, a thing he’s good at, that he enjoys and connects with, is the furthest thing from his mind.

It’s just that he can’t start to raise much of a care about it, not in the beginning. In the beginning, it’s just a choking pressure that pulses in his gut and sometimes between his legs, and often slips away just as quickly, lost to a wave of exhaustion that smothers him of air.

*

The first time Blaine tries to get himself off after - afterwards, he mostly ends up bored. His body doesn’t respond the way he’s used to, and both concentration and desire slip away from him alarmingly quickly. He gives up and curls into himself on his side, tucks his sheets around himself and stares at the wall. Broken, he thinks. Even this is broken. Can’t sing, can’t play, can’t keep his fiance happy, and now he can’t even blow off steam in the darkness of his own room. He presses one hand between his thighs, against his obstinate and uncooperative dick, and wraps his other arm around his own shoulder as he buries his face in his pillow. 

It’s only on the brink of sleep, drifting in a foggy haze of self-loathing, that he has to ask himself if he really wants it anyway, realises that he actually sort of still doesn’t. He wants to want it more than he actually has any desire to get off, and he’s aware that it’s not like him to continue feeling like this. He has always enjoyed sex, enjoyed his body, but it feels odd and blunted and distant from where he is right now.

He adds it to his list of things to talk to his therapist about.

*

The second time, it just takes a long time, leaves him feeling empty and sadder than before. On the plus side, it happened. That’s a relief. He’s not physically broken, and that’s good. It still feels mechanical, though, rote and awkward. He finds himself thinking too hard about it, about the boys he watches and yearns for, about who they are and what their lives are and it pulls him out of the moment, stops him from focussing on the sex that he abstractly wants and which realistically reminds him too much of everything he doesn’t have. He comes, but it’s not what he wants. 

His therapist suggests amending his medication may help. 

He doesn’t try again for weeks regardless.

*

The third time is in the shower. His body feels good, feels right in a way he’s almost forgotten is possible. His limbs feel attached and he can touch the places that he knows he enjoys. His hands feel good on his skin, his fingers and the water feel almost worshipful, and he’s close, so close, his eyes closed and his body humming, when his mom knocks on the bathroom door and reminds him that water costs money, so he’d better not be wasting it.

It slips away from him again and he can’t get it back. He washes his face in the sink and flattens his hair, stares into his own eyes behind the hazy wet fog of the mirror, and almost hates the desolation that stares back at him. He swipes at the water on the mirror, obscures his own reflection, and unlocks the bathroom door. His mom smiles at him from the open doorway of his room.

He can’t even bring himself to worry about what she might find in there today.

*

The fourth time is after he speaks to his therapist again. He tries to put less pressure on himself, waits until it feels natural, normal, like it’s something he wants, until his brain and his body are communicating with one another and want the same thing. He can do that, does do that. He maintains his routines, turns off his light, and reads on his phone, the way he used to in New York when he had time and nothing else to do. 

He feels the way his body responds, tries not to focus on it, tries to just let it be a thing the happens, lets himself have this moment.

But God, it feels so good when he touches himself, when he he exhales, his skin alive and his body responding, and it’s the first orgasm that feels like he remembers, that leaves him buzzing and alive. 

And hopeful that he can have this again.

*

The fifth time reminds him that it’s not a given. He sleeps in 90 minute bursts and gets up before the sun, makes himself hot tea, and watches breakfast television with the volume down low, his knees tucked up against his chest and his fingers picking idly at the threads of his pyjama top. His mom turns the light on and kisses his unruly hair when she comes downstairs, takes his now cold tea away, and calls from the kitchen to ask if he’d like another. 

“Yeah,” he responds, his throat tight for no good reason. She puts it on the table beside him, and smiles sadly.

“Have you been awake long?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and it’s true. The clock on the TV says he’s been up for almost two hours, but he’s not sure how long he’s been awake.

“Do you need your dad or I to stay home?” she says, concerned, and he shakes his head. 

“No, I’m okay. I’ve got an appointment today anyway. I’ll be out.”

She touches his knee, squeezes softly, and the smile he flicks on for her actually feels real on his lips. 

And that’s - that’s sort of nice.

*

After that, he stops counting in failed attempts.

He stops counting at all.

He takes the wins where he can get them, though.

*

His therapist suggests reengaging with the scene, if it’s something he enjoys, or could possibly enjoy. Blaine stares at him as he thinks about it. “The scene” isn’t much here - one slightly seedy bar where the 70s aren’t a retro pastiche so much as a the decade when half of the patrons were Blaine’s age now, and a lesbian couple he’s met less than a handful of times. It’s not exactly the Village, where he’d spent a lot of wonderful nights dancing with men who’d adored him. But - it is a scene, and it’s nominally his, and - and maybe it wouldn’t be quite so awful, reengaging on ground the feels firm and familiar, that he’s been sure of since he was 13 years old (longer than that, if he counts the years he didn’t have the words for it yet as well). He drives home with the theme tune to Gilligan’s Island on a loop in his head, and a slowly coalescing desire to actually be out. Maybe it’d help. Or at least, it couldn’t hurt. Not more than he is already.

He looks Scandals up on his phone, lying on his bed with his bare toes pressed against the footboard to anchor himself. He feels like parts of himself are flying away, and earthing himself to something solid keeps his body from jittering apart as he scrolls through their Facebook page. He can feel his smile growing as he reads, as he looks at pictures. It’s not what he remembers, what he’s used to, but it’s something he can have and do that doesn’t have to remind him solely of all the things he doesn’t have.

This weekend, declares the flier they’ve posted, is going to be “Country Bear Night”. He finds himself laughing at the idea as it parades around his brain in gingham and plaid, burly men with beards and stonewash denim jeans smiling at him. 

At him.

And he thinks, yeah, he’s missed being admired and appreciated and feeling like he has a place where he belongs and is wanted. 

He presses like on their page before he can over think himself, and then pushes himself upright and off of his bed, pads quietly to his wardrobe to pour through his shirt options.

Decision made, he feels lighter in his skin than he has done in months.

*

The thing with Lima is that nothing changes. Or nothing changes much. The staid predictability is, to his current state of emotional shock, actually a little bit comforting. Blaine swings his car into the lot at Scandals and sits in it for a long moment, staring at the building’s facade, at the door, and at the men entering, alone and together, and slowly he climbs out, crosses the asphalt, and presents his ID (‘Jacob Warner’ is 22, from Indiana, or so says his licence) to the doorman and then again to the bartender when he asks for a beer.

He’s ready to just allow the evening to settle under his skin, warm and open and part of him, when he thinks he recognises one of the faces doing the electric slide on the dance floor, and it forces him to sit up a little straighter, pay a little more attention, because it can’t be but it is…

Of all the people he did not expect to meet again in his life, David Karofsky is pretty high on the list.

*

Karofsky - Dave, Blaine corrects himself - turns out to be pretty easy to talk to. He gets himself a beer and sits opposite Blaine, asks him how he’s doing and why he’s here and Blaine finds himself answering with more candor than he’s shown in a while. Dave sips his beer and nods, listens as Blaine talks about Kurt, and about their break up, and about moving home.

“Home?” Dave asks, and Blaine picks at the corner of the label on his bottle, damp and peeling. 

“Yeah, well,” he says, and twists his shoulder in a deflective shrug. “New York never really felt like home. There wasn’t - there wasn’t really a place for me there.” He offers a smile, but the truth burns behind his eyes and he stares at the table until he’s got the wobble of his emotions back under his own control again. When he’s sure he’s not going to cry, he looks at Dave again, and sees compassion in the set of his mouth. He wants to believe it’s compassion anyway.

Dave asks him if he wants to get coffee sometime, and Blaine downs the last of his beer, nods his head. “Yeah,” he says, doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t stop to think at all. Coffee is, after all, the non-relationship drink of choice. Coffee would be great.

*

Blaine gets a regular drip, biscotti, and a table by the window. He’s staring at the lot when he sees Dave’s truck pull into a space near his car, watches as he jumps down from the cab and crosses the asphalt toward the door. He seems confident in his body now, like he knows who he is. It’s - not unattractive, in its own way. It’s good to see him living in his own skin. It’s a long way removed from who he was at 16.

When he slides into a seat across from Blaine and says hi, it takes a moment for Blaine to respond. “Hi,” he says, eventually. 

They talk. Blaine gets another coffee, and then splits a muffin, and the shadows grow longer, the patrons around them changing as they catch up. Blaine speaks, briefly, about the dip in his mood, doesn’t use the word ‘depression’ because it seems huge and terrifying, and he doesn’t know Dave that well, and Dave - Dave says, “I saw a woman for a little while, my senior year.” He stops then, his hands dropping to his lap. Blaine’s stay firmly on his side of the table, but he smiles and inclines his head, listens. Dave’s exhale is heavy, and his hand moves unconsciously to his throat, rubs gently, and drops when he realises he’s doing it.

“You don’t have to -” Blaine says, and Dave shakes his head.

“It’s cool. It’s a long time ago. And it’s not like you don’t know about it.” He pauses, and his jaw clenches as he works through his next thought. “I guess I’m trying to say I get it. For a short while, I couldn’t imagine anyone’s life was better with me in it, including mine. Couldn’t see tomorrow, much less next year. But it’s -” He stops again and meets Blaine’s steady gaze with his own. “It’s better,” he finishes, offers a quirk of the corner of his mouth. Blaine returns it, feels it slip and then hold, but it’s there.

“Yeah,” Blaine agrees. He wraps his hands around his mug, cool against his skin now, but it gives him something to do that isn’t playing with a plastic fork or performing elaborate napkin origami. Dave’s hand on his wrist is huge, feels like it could crush his bones, except he’s gentle and it’s grounding, calming, holds him together a little. He breathes out slowly, focuses himself on where his body touches the ground, breathes in deeply and meets Dave’s concerned gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Dave says, and Blaine’s laugh is wet and empty of mirth.

“Yeah,” he says again. And then, “I’m sorry. You didn’t sign up for this.” He gestures himself, neatly pressed shirt and sports jacket and bowtie, everything about him looking put together, the things he can still control perfectly aligned. 

“No,” Dave says, and Blaine narrows his eyes. "But I'd like to do this again." Dave releases his wrist, pulls his phone from his pocket. “Give me your number,” he says, more command than request. “I feel like you could use a friend. I know how you’re feeling. We can do this again.”

Blaine's brain careens for a moment before reeling off his number automatically, and then he gathers his car keys from the satchel at his feet. His phone beeps from the pocket. “I’ve got to go,” he says, blinking rapidly. “I’ve - I’ve got to go.”

He barely looks back as he crosses the lot to his car and drives away, the evening sun low in the cooling summer sky.

*

Coffee with Dave Karofsky becomes dinner with Dave Karofsky, and Blaine’s mom is the first person to flat out ask him what the story is. He pauses in front of the mirror, cants his head and says he doesn’t know, that it’s just easy and free of pressure and he’s having fun. It makes him wonder, though, if this is more, if it could be more, if he could be content with this, exclusively, for a while.

Driving home again, after dinner, full and sleepy and happy, he thinks perhaps he could.

Or he could try, at least. He’s not lessened by trying.

He sits next to his mom on the couch when he gets in, waits for the ad break in her show, and says, “We’re going out. As a thing. Together.”

She looks at him for a long moment before her face softens into a smile. “I’ve missed you, sweetie,” she says, and reaches for his hand. When she releases him and her show starts again, he pushes himself upright and jogs up the stairs to shower and wash his hair out. He feels good, and he’d like to hang onto it for a while.

*

The first time Dave kisses him, only a brief goodbye glancing off the corner of his mouth, is the first time Blaine consciously realises that there are parts of being someone’s boyfriend that he hasn’t fully considered. He kisses Dave back, lets himself be hugged and hugs back, but his brain reels through all the things he’s not ready for, that he doesn’t know how to say he can’t do. Part of his brain whispers, insidious and insistent, that sex is a normal thing, an expected thing. Sex is intimacy and connection and look what happened before when he couldn’t - 

He feels himself going stiff and pulls away awkwardly, his smile plastic and forced. Dave doesn’t seem to notice, lets him go as he digs through his pocket for his keys. “I’ll pick you up for the game on Friday?” he says. “You can stay over if it gets too late to be worth driving back across town.” Blaine bobs his head. 

“Yeah,” he replies, blinks and ignores the cold creep of terror that edges down his spine.

“Blaine?”

“Thank you for dinner,” Blaine says, and then, “I’m sorry. I’ve had a great night. I’ll see you Friday.” 

The shaking doesn’t stop until he’s lying in his bed, music playing quietly in his ears as he finally manages to quiet the voices in his head that want him to believe that he’s not worth the trouble if sex is off the table.

*

The game doesn’t run late, but they’ve already agreed that Blaine will stay the night regardless. In a bag in Dave’s bedroom is Blaine’s toothbrush and pyjamas, a change of clothes and his shampoo and gel and razor, and his skin cream and soap. He pictures the pill bottles lying in a drawer in his own room, not hidden, but not advertised either. Sitting quietly in the passenger seat of Dave’s truck as they drive back, staring out of the window, he finally says it, voices the concern that has been bubbling in his skull for days. “I don’t want to have sex with you,” he says, his voice barely louder than the radio. Dave glances at him, and then turns the radio off. Blaine looks at him, and then stares out of the window at the road. “I mean - I -”

Dave saves him from himself in the end, doesn’t look at him as he watches the road too. “I wasn't thinking that we would,” he says. "Not right away." 

Blaine exhales, feels the tension in his limbs flow out and away from him. He allows himself take comfort in the words, even as the ones which follow ring hollow in his ears. “Besides, I sorta know how it goes.”

Blaine’s doubtful of that, but then, maybe it's nice that Dave wants to understand? He doesn't respond, only turns the radio back on, Taylor Swift commanding him to shake it off as they drive.

And really, it’s kind of nice, once he’s brushed his hair loose and gone through his own abbreviated nighttime ritual in Dave’s bathroom, to crawl into a bed that doesn’t feel vast and empty and achingly lonely, to let himself be lulled into sleep by the heavy breaths and strange, familiar smells of another man sleeping with him.

*

He sleeps over on weekends. Dave has school and his job, and Blaine has his job and his therapist and - and actually making the leap of moving his things in feels huge and impenetrable. He does have stuff that slowly migrates, though, from his room to Dave's. His shampoo, and his aftershave, and spare pajamas that he won't miss, a toothbrush because it just makes sense. He can drive over on Fridays, straight from Dalton, take food with him if they're not going out, and not have to go home first for clothes. It's like - it's like the first days, the early days, when he only had weekends, and he lets himself enjoy it. He’s not sure if he’s in love, but it’s comfortable and he knows what to expect from Dave. He’d almost call the feeling happy, but he settles for content.

They've been at it a month, their shared little rituals, when Blaine starts thinking again that maybe it's time. Maybe he could at least try. Like he should at least offer, and it's not that he's revolted by the concept, it's just vague, abstract, incohesive in his mind. He knows the mechanics of it, though. He can do that? 

He makes it into bed first, his hair loose and his body tight as he waits for Dave. He sees the lights go out, hears the click of doors closing, and feet on the carpet as Dave tries not to disturb him, pushing the door quietly closed behind him as he enters the room. Blaine breathes out as the bed dips, as Dave’s weight settles beside him, and he moves closer, presses his palm to Dave’s face as his lips meet Dave’s. He can do this, wants this. Or - or he wants to want it, and Dave’s hand, when it touches his hip, feels good, the warmth and the contact settling, grounding, and Blaine presses closer, until his body aligns neatly with Dave’s, until he can feel the way Dave’s body responds to his, the way Dave’s mouth and pulse and urgency respond.

The way his body doesn’t, or does, but fitfully, slipping away from him when he tries to hold onto it.

Dave pulls away from him, and Blaine is certain that he can feel disappointment washing over him, pulsing through him. “Blaine?” he says, his hand coming to Blaine’s face, large and heavy. Blaine turns his head and presses a kiss to his palm.

“I want to do something for you,” Blaine says, soft in the shadowy darkness. He shifts his weight, presses his lips to Dave’s mouth again, and then to his throat and chest, feels Dave’s hands tangle in his hair. “Let me -” he breathes into his skin.

It seemed easier, in his head, doing this, like less of an ordeal. Part of him wondered if perhaps the act might make him want it more himself, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want it, not in any tangible way that he can hold on to. Inside of his head, he knows that this is part of his problem. Holding onto desire is like trying to holding sand in his hands. 

He can’t do this. Dave’s hand in his hair is too much, his pulse is too much, the shift of his hips and the smell in his nose and he can’t. 

“Stop,” he chokes. Dave’s fingers tighten before they let go, and Blaine rolls away to the other side of the bed, takes the sheet with him as he stares at the wall, listens to Dave breathe and waits for the recrimination that must be coming.

“Blaine,” Dave says, and Blaine stays silent, doesn’t move until Dave’s hand meets the bare skin at his waist, and then he flinches. Dave removes his hand, and Blaine can feel him hovering, turns enough to meet his eyes over his shoulder.

“Sorry,” he says eventually. “I thought -”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Blaine snorts a mirthless laugh. “Yeah, it does.” He pushes himself to sit upright and wraps the sheet around himself. “Sorry,” he says again, leans back and presses a kiss to Dave’s mouth. “Keep the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

He’s gone before Dave can stop him, and he tries not to think too hard about how Dave doesn’t come to get him. 

(In the morning, he makes apology pancakes and pours orange juice into a glass, wakes Dave gently and sits beside him as he eats, says, “I’m scared I’m too much work some days.” Dave returns his fork to his plate and looks at him for a long minute, like he doesn’t know what the response is. Blaine doesn’t know if there is a response that would help. He takes the empty plate back to the kitchen, and is still stood at the sink when a hand wraps around his waist and lips meet his neck. Maybe the answer is starting smaller, because this comfort feels good at least.)

*

Sex is - or, necessarily, becomes - an adventure. There are days - many days - when it isn’t a possibility. In the beginning, Blaine spends a lot of nights lying sleepless on the couch. Sharing the inside of his head takes time and comfort to develop fully. Learning to explain himself, to ask for time and patience, requires a level of intimacy that is harder, sometimes, than just putting himself out is. He doesn’t expect Dave to be able to understand him, to be able to read the twist of his shoulders or the set of his mouth, but words are slow to coalesce. 

Some days, when he thinks he should, when he thinks it’s something that should be easy (and sometimes, sometimes actually is), he uses his mouth and his hands, and ignores the tug in his heart that says this is a mechanical service he provides because he still thinks he should. 

As they progress, as Dave come to know him better, learns how to make him laugh more and speak more, as his tablets make it from his bedroom to Dave’s bathroom, Dave learns to stop him as often as he stops himself, learns to say he doesn’t have to, not if he doesn’t want to, learns to distinguish when Blaine’s body is stiff and uncooperative. Dave learns to speak to him without telling him he knows the inside of his head, to stop saying he understands, only holds his body against his until Blaine’s breathing loses the tightness of panic and duty and his smile edges back. 

He learns to say, free of inflection or blame, “I can’t read your mind,” so that Blaine can meet his eyes and press his mouth into a line. 

“You don’t have to,” he says. 

“It feels like I’m trying to sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“I don’t want you to be sorry, B,” he whispers. “I just want to know how you are.”

Blaine learns to actually answer that question, first with the familiar lie that he’s fine, he’s okay, and then, eventually, with half truths - that he’ll be okay, he just needs to unwind; that it’s been a long day, but he’s had worse and he’ll be fine if they can marathon Friends on Netflix tonight, or if they can go out for food and a movie instead of staying home. 

When he starts responding to the “How was your day?” phone calls as he drives home with truths, he thinks perhaps they have had a breakthrough. At the very least, he finds it easier to spend his breaks at work emailing Dave links to websites he might find useful in learning to understand how Blaine’s body works right now. He knows that this isn’t what they mean by “talk to your partner”, but it’s a start. 

Talking is hard. It’s hard, and it’s awkward, but it helps. Blaine says he feels like he’s withholding something that’s vital, that’s _normal_ , that should be easy. Or used to be, anyway. He says he wants to want it, wants it to be like it was, but it’s not. Sex is this amorphous thing that, half the time, feels light years from his physical reality. And then he’s silent for a moment, and Dave’s silence hangs heavy between them as well.

“Is it me?” he says, eventually, and Blaine shakes his head.

“No.” Adamant. It’s not. Because there’s still New York in his head, and his junior year, and every other time he’s lost his body to self-imposed distance. This is him, a thing he does, all his own. “No, it’s not you.” 

“So - you could want to?”

Blaine’s response is slower, more cautious, unwilling to make a promise he can’t always keep. “I need you to understand it’s not your fault if I can’t,” he tries again. “But that doesn’t mean we can’t. Sometimes.”

Blaine would still like, when no amount of patience or lack of pressure will help, to feel like less of a failure, or at least, less like he’s a disappointment. There are times he wishes Dave knew his body better, and knows that it will happen with time, knows that this is a learning process for them both, and that communication is the key to success. 

The first time they come (almost) together, Blaine almost cries because having his body back feels amazing. He lets himself have the moment, to not chase after the next one 

The times he doesn’t, or can’t, he tries (and loses, sometimes, and wins on others) not to hold it against Dave, who doesn’t always understand, but who does continue to try. 

On the nights when he only wants to curl into the warmth of Dave’s body and be held, he understands that this is how it is for him, at least for now: a redefinition of intimacy, and gratitude that he’s worth the effort. 

*

The thing is, though, for all of the roadblocks and speed bumps, Blaine is happy. In a way he didn’t think he ever would be again when he left New York, when he returned to Ohio and had had to rebuild everything, replan his trajectory and learn to like himself the way he is, Blaine Anderson would actually say that he is happy. The future is different to the one he’d imagined three years ago, but he feels like he is living up to his hopes for himself all the same. He has laughter back, and music is a process but his job is helping, the boys he works with leave him wanting to sing again. He goes home at the ends of his days to someone who loves him, someone who likes taking him out, and enjoys showing him off. He feels like he’s afloat again, like he’ll - one day - be just fine. 

So maybe this isn’t forever. It doesn’t matter. It’s okay for right now, and he’ll take that because it’s here and it’s _good_.

And if there’s one thing Blaine has learned in the last few months, it’s to take the good days where he can get them.


End file.
